Phew!

I survived. I made it through the week before Christmas vacation with kindergartners. It's not easy, let me tell ya. They are always on hyper-drive, but this time of year they are on double hyper-drive. Everything is Santa and presents and candy canes and tinsel. They are doing all kinds of fun, exciting holiday stuff at home and the energy carries on into the classroom. But after so many years teaching kindergarten, I'm ready for it. And we all made it through and had some fun on the way.

I also had the pleasure of teaching Bible class this week. (We combine preschool through 2nd grade and have one big Bible class with four teachers taking turns teaching.) I was glad to get to teach the story of the birth of Jesus. Most of my students have heard the story so many times that they could teach the class. They know all about the angels and the shepherds and Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus. So I tried to make it fresh. I used picture cards to tell the story the first time and then reviewed the next day adding more to it. But as we reviewed, it went something like this:

"Then the angel came to Mary and said, 'I have good news. Your pizza is here!'"
"NO! She's going to have a baby."
"Ohhh. That's right. A baby. Then Mary and Joseph headed to New York for the census."
"NO! Bethlehem!"
"Bethlehem. Right. When they got there they started to look for McDonald's."
"NO! The inn."
"Oh, yeah. The inn. They found the inn and they had lots of rooms left."
"NO! There were no rooms!"
"Oh, that's right, no rooms. So they had to stay at the mall."
"NO! In the stable!"
"The stable. Right. Then baby Jesus was born and they put him in a nice, warm crib."
"NO! The manger."
"The manger? Really?"
"YES!"

The kids thought it was great fun teaching the teacher. And hopefully they got the idea and don't go home telling their parents that Mary and Joseph went to McDonald's.

We also had our school Christmas play this week. Adam was Joseph and Josh was a donkey seller. The cutest Joseph and donkey seller ever, if I do say so myself. It was really cute. My class was angels and we only had one angel robe over the head and one lost halo. Not bad. The parents love it, and that's what matters.

Then yesterday we had a little party for our class. There were lots of treats and goodies. It was fun to share in the excitement of the season with my class who love it so much.

And last night when we got home, we decorated our Christmas tree. I like to wait until school's out for vacation to decorate. I'm just never quite ready until then. The kids have been wanting to put up the tree since Thanksgiving, so we told them we'd do it the last day of school. And that's what we did. Julianna had so much fun looking at everything. The rest of us have seen all the ornaments before, but it's the first year she's really been able to join in the fun of the tree. And it's lovely with all the hodge podge of ornaments and snowflakes and icicles.

So here I am today, with a semi-short list of things to do and a whole Saturday with absolutely nothing planned. It's the perfect start to a two week vacation.